I have a lot of stories about my love/romantic life. Sometimes I feel bad that I am still not "settled" or haven't been in an ideal relationship but overall I have more joy about being single than otherwise.
Through my journey I have learnt a lot of love and romantic relationships. Below are some of what I have learnt.
1. I do not believe in the concept of hope when it comes to relationships. For example if I like a girl and I ask her out and she somehow snubs me or tells me she "is not ready". I do not and will never bother to stay around "hoping" that she would "become ready". To me the concept of HOPE has no relation to Romanticism. I had a young lady once who liked me a lot of even though we were not dating and I did not ask her out, she kept treating me like I was her boyfriend. She later said that she was hoping that by treating me that way we would just become boyfriend and girlfriend without thinking much about it. I wanted to teach her something when she said that but I chose not to. What I wanted to teach her was that - anything relating to a romantic relationship that leads to marriage should never be done mistakenly. Marriage should be gone into like a business deal, a lot of negotiations should occur - it should be a very deliberate effort.
BALANCE: Before I make the decision of not continuing to pursue a lady, I assess her reasons for denying me. I am a very realistic person so if it is something like "she doesn't think I make enough money" or "she doesn't like my nose". I immediately move on without thinking twice. Now, if it were something like "she doesn't know enough about me" or "she is playing hard to get", sure I will still continue.
2. I try to tell people that you have to know how you define love. There are different kinds of love. You need to know how you define love and how the other person you like or want to be in a relationship with defines love. For a lot of people, love is a feeling - a positive feeling. For me though, love is A COMMITMENT THAT IS NOT BASED ON HOW WE FEEL BUT HOW WE ACT PUTTING OTHERS INTERESTS BEFORE OURS AND ULTIMATELY CHRIST'S INTERESTS FIRST. So if I meet a young lady and I teach her my own definition of love and she does not agree with it - forget it.I forget about the relationship immediately. There is no moving forward. To me this is something very straightforward.
BALANCE: Even though the young lady might not agree at first, if she is open to the idea/definition and there is a possibility that she could accept it, then sure I would continue.
3. Balance is very important. I think one of the reasons I am still single is because I love my personal freedom too much. My last relationship was not good because she was an indoors person. She did not really enjoy going out. I am similar but sometimes I just like to hang out with my friends and CHILL. I realized that every time I hung out with my friends she got so jealous that she made me feel terrible for hanging out with my friends. That was definitely unhealthy. I do not ever see myself being in that position again. Like the point I referred to in number 1, a solution to this would have been for us to sit down like adults and discuss this conflict. I would have told her, "listen, I would love to hang out with my friends once or twice a week and hang out with you the other three or four or five days in the week. These are the specific days and times I will hang out with my friends. Do you agree with this?"
I believe couples should be able to freely talk like this about the things they have conflict about. The balance in the above situation is that normally I might hang out with my friends 4 times a week but I am sacrificing 2 extra days to suit my partner.
BALANCE: Already discussed.
4. We need to keep in mind that all human beings are selfish and that is one of the reasons why we should never try to change someone. We can try to influence people but we should never try to change anyone. I have lost several friendships because I have tried to change people. I realized that even though it is important to be a good influence and to motivate or push people to be better, we should not push too hard because their allegiance to themselves is ALWAYS going to be more than their allegiance to US. True change is hard, difficult, and most people want to take the path of least resistance. I have ended a lot of romantic relationships that I would have liked to continue because I realized that I would want to change the person too much. I took responsibility for that person. for that relationship and decided to end it in order to avoid future profound pain. I need someone that fits me without having to make major behavioral or character changes. Or the person should at least be on the right path while I help motivate them to get to "that place".
BALANCE: It is important that you are also showing that the person is influencing you and changing you too in positive ways. If you are so far advanced emotionally from someone, it creates a dynamic when you are the one always teaching the person. Learn a few things from the person too.
5. Most people take others for granted. I think this is one of my pet peeves in relationships. When you treat someone so nicely and then they take you granted. I have several stories about this. I have come to accept that it is human nature yet if there is something about me that I adore the most it is that I do not take the people in my life for granted. I do not know who taught me this or how it was taught but it is something I would love to instill in my children. In order to stop people from taking you from granted, you have to be more conscious of your behavior. What this means is that if you are a very nice person, you have to deliberately reduce your niceness/kindness so the person does not get used to it. Once you do this you can gradually increase the niceness or give random "bursts" of kindness. I believe that 80-90% of most people take things for granted. Therefore this approach can be used on most people. Now, if you manage to meet people in that 10-20% that do not take you for granted, then you can discard this approach and just be yourself. It is sad that you have to limit your niceness to people in order to ensure they do not take you for granted but this is what the world has turned into.
BALANCE: If you do not care if people take you for granted, discard this advice.
6. In a relationships, both people should be teachable. The point of a relationship is that both people must adapt to each other. It should not be just one way. I tell my mentees that any two people can be in a relationship as long as one of them is ready to sacrifice EVERYTHING.
Having good manners is enough to get you a good man or a good woman. Simple things like being clean, being courteous - if you can live with someone and they say you are a good/great roommate to have, that alone is good enough to get you a good person to marry.
For now, there goes my humble advice and rant on love. I could go in more detail but I think I have actually talked enough. Holler!
